Monday, January 20, 2014

Paperback Novelties: Dread Journey, by Dorothy B. Hughes

Here's an unusual paperback from 1947, Pocket Books' edition of Dorothy B. Hughes psychological thriller Dread Journey (1945). I'll be reviewing this train mystery later this week (a book review of another mystery will be uploaded later today).

How often do we see African-Americans on crime fiction paperbacks in the 1940s and 1950s. Experts, help me out here!

In this case I think the most striking individual is the African-American railway porter. His glance at the couple directs attention to them (and particularly the woman's fearful reaction to what she sees in the passenger compartment), but he holds attention in his own right.

a Pullman porter

The depiction of the porter on this paperback seems quite a ways off from what we were getting with portrayals of African-Americans in such forties films as the Charlie Chan mysteries, for example. Superb artwork, I think, one of the classiest paperback covers from the era that I have seen (does it remind anyone else a bit of Mexican mural art?).

On African-American porters see this interesting article by article by Lawrence Tye, author of the book Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class (2004).

5 comments:

AARGH! It happened again. Dread Journey is in my TBR pile and was a going to be reviewed by me in February. I have it lined up as a "Book with a mode of transportation" for Bev's Vintage Mystery Bingo challenge. This is truly becoming like some kind of habitual commuter trip into the Twilight Zone!

I'm not an expert, but I've certainly seen a ton of paperbacks in my day … African-Americans on the covers, not so much in the 1940s, but in the 1950s, absolutely; particularly from Signet. There was a sub-genre of "steamy Southern romances" patterned after the paperback success of "Tobacco Road", and thematic veins like "woman of colour passing for white", "urban juvenile delinquent gang comes to a bad end", and "hillbilly Romeo & Juliet"-- I think you'd find African-Americans frequently represented on the covers of these types of novels. The only earlier one I can think of than the one you show here is actually a bit of a cheat: Popular Library #80, Frances Crane's "The Golden Box", from 1946. As my memory tells me, the silhouette of the hanged woman on the cover is that of an African-American servant, but you'd only know that if you read the book.

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Author of "Masters of the 'Humdrum' Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961"
"Magisterial"--Michael Dirda
"Edgar Committee, Mystery Writers of America, take note!"--Allen J. Hubin
"This should be a certain Edgar nominee"--Jon L. Breen, Mystery Scene
"Clues and Corpses: The Detective Fiction and Mystery Criticism of Todd Downing."
"Mysteries Unlocked: Essays in Honor of Douglas G. Greene" (editor and contributor)
"The Spectrum of English Murder: The Detective Fiction of Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher and GDH and Margaret Cole"
and the Edgar-nominated "Murder in the Closet: Queer Clues in Crime Fiction Before Stonewall" (editor and contributor)